U.S. order targets WikiLeaks supporter's mail: report

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government obtained secret court orders to force Google Inc and a small Internet provider to hand over information from email accounts of a WikiLeaks volunteer, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The home page of the Wikileaks.org website is pictured on a computer in Hoboken, New Jersey, November 28, 2010. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn

The U.S. request included email addresses of people that Jacob Appelbaum, a volunteer for the campaigning website, had corresponded with in the past two years, but not the full emails, the newspaper said, citing documents it had reviewed.

Internet provider Sonic said it fought the government order legally and lost, and was forced to turn over information, the company’s chief executive, Dane Jasper, told the newspaper.

Appelbaum, 28, has not been charged with any wrongdoing, the daily said.

WikiLeaks last year angered the U.S. government by making public tens of thousands of secret U.S. files and diplomatic cables that embarrassed Washington, as well as a classified video of a contested American military operation in Iraq.

The Google order dated January 4, 2011, directed the search giant to turn over IP address from which Appelbaum logged into his Gmail.com account and the email and IP addresses of the users with whom he communicated dating back to November 1, 2009.

It isn’t clear whether Google fought the order or turned over documents, the Journal said.

The controversial court orders are expected to add fuel to a growing debate over a controversial law — the Electronic Communications Privacy Act — that allows the U.S. government to secretly obtain information from people’s email and cellphones without a search warrant.

This year, micro-blogging website Twitter fought a similar court order to hand over details of the accounts of several WikiLeaks supporters, including Appelbaum, as part of a criminal investigation launched by the Department of Justice into the major leaking of confidential U.S. documents.

Appelbaum is a developer for the Tor Project Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides free tools that help people maintain their anonymity online, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Twitter has not turned over information from the accounts of the Wikileaks supporters, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the investigation. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Robert Birsel)